Group Presentations

The Group Presentations activity intends to encourage students to participate in team work either through multiple channels or multiple locations. The activity is developed over a number of weeks and is designed to be scaffolded by the work done in lectures and tutorials as the course develops.

Rationale

The Group Presentations activity gives students the opportunity to develop graduate attributes and digital literacy.

Learners/Context

The Group Presentations activity can be used by any course with learners at any level. The example used in this pattern is from a first year introductory level course (BUSM4176) with a large cohort operating over multiple campuses.

Alignment

The Group Presentations activity is useful for students to develop collaborative and presentation skills as well as for exploring deeper topic themes.

Instructions/Processes

Prior to Semester

Develop your weekly topics with a relevant question. Each week the groups provide the answer on a separate slide in their joint presentation. By scaffolding the presentation in line with the topics the groups can build up their presentation in draft form over time
Create groups of 3 or 4 students. For expediency, create the groups in BlackBoard (Bb), allocate students into random groups. However, it is possible to create groups during the tutorials and allocate a topic to each group
Ensure you are familiar with Google Apps, especially slides (formerly known as Google Presentations). Also become familiar with hangout and its functionalities
- Google Slides allows multiple users to work on a document simultaneously, as well as to leave comments and chat to each other as they work. It saves automatically so work is not lost
- Google Slides can be installed as an app on mobile devices and used to edit the presentation or to present
- Hangouts On AIr is a very user-friendly web conferencing tool, which easily switches the camera view depending on who is speaking. Students can screenshare in order to show the Slides they’ve made. In order to use Google Hangouts On Air students may need to opt-in to Google+ first via the RMIT IT Services student site. You can install the Hangouts app on a mobile device, however this does not allow for the screen sharing function to be used

In Class

Explain to students about the weekly topics and the created groups. Each student in the group has a particular role to fulfil
Explain to students about Google Slides and Google Hangouts and that they will be presenting their work in a final presentation
There are three ways to do final presentation:
- Face to face, where the students are asked to keep to a strict time limit, for example 1 minute per slide. Use a mobile device and ask the students to time each other - each group times the group after it
- Live online, where the students use the Google Hangouts On Air function to present to a live audience of their peers. All group members log in from their own location and present. Once again the 1 minute per slide rule can be implemented. The advantage of this is that this need not be slotted into tutorial groups but can be scheduled at different times. The Hangouts On Air can be recorded
- Record presentation for later viewing in Google Hangouts On Air. The group sets up a Hangout On Air and records itself presenting its work. The advantage of this is that they can do several recordings, and then share the best one with the tutor, lecturer or wider class

Whichever method is used it is important to set a time limit on presentations, maximum 10 minutes.

Extension

Ask the groups to share their presentation with others in the larger tutorial group or the cohort in general as it is developed. You could use peer assessment and peer feedback during the development of the presentation
Ask the groups to do a pecha kucha presentation. Pecha kucha rules are that each presentation consists of no more than 20 slides each presented for no more than 20 seconds. This will necessitate considerable thought, planning and rehearsal from the group
Cancel the tutorials in the last week, and ask students to attend at least 3 presentation sessions by other students, as well as participate in their own presentation. In Google spreadsheets develop a timetable for students to indicate the date and time of their Hangouts, as well as a link, in an open spaces, such as a wiki page or a Google Doc with their comments.

Conditions/Critical Success Factors